Thursday 2 June 2011

US History revamped in a month

I will be teaching a Level 1 undergraduate US History 1850-1989 course from September this year and am in the midst of revamping last year's module (pretty good, all made sense, but heavily reliant on one text).

I'm looking at bringing in David Reynold's Empire of Liberty and will probably use High Brogan's Penguin History as recommended reading alongside last year's title, Foner's Give me Liberty! 

The fun now is searching out a series of primary source materials to use as the basis for our seminar sessions - Civil War, Civil Rights, Camelot, The Great White Fleet, War from the Top, War from the Bottom, Star Wars, Indian Wars, Truman Doctrine, Sputnik, New Deal, Great Society, Great Depression, Watergate, Irangate, Doughboys, Wilsonian Peace, Progressives, Red Scares and Reds under the bed. Taylor to Reagan - there are an awful lot of possibilities to investigate.

I'm very open to suggestions of accessible documents that would be worthy of analysis and debate by primarily UK students taking their first steps as undergrads.